I was just telling my husband one of my anecdotes about life in the lower-working-class neighborhood where I grew up, and it occurs to me there’s a lesson there that can apply to weight loss (as almost anything can, if you look at it that way).Here’s the story I told him:

A few miles from where I lived, next door to the Sears Roebuck, there was an Orange Julius stand.The sign in front of it was one of those where you insert individual letters into a frame to spell out the message (remember those?), and it lost a couple of letters, so that it advertised ‘HoDogs &urgers’.They never replaced the letters, and for years it continued to read HoDogs &urgers.For some reason, I loved that sign. It just seemed a perfect metaphor for life in that neighborhood, the kind of place where when letters fell off a sign, they didn’t bother to replace them.It became a byword with us, and we’d say ‘Let’s go get a ho dog,’ or ‘You want an urger for lunch?’

To this day, I sometimes think of them as ho dogs and have to remember to correct myself before I speak.

That got me to thinking that there have been many times when I came to accept something I knew was dysfunctional, so that over time it became “normal” and eventually, preferred.Now I’m wondering what patterns of behavior I have that are like that sign, missing letters, never repaired, and dysfunction in a way that I no longer notice.Are there behaviors that I prefer only because they are familiar, even though they have never served me well?

I think it’s time I examined my habits through fresh eyes, as a stranger would that broken sign, and see if there are any that, although understandable and perhaps even quaint, are nevertheless undeniably an error.